Help! I Can’t Pray!

Have you ever been so overwhelmed you could not pray? Most of the time we survey our situation. We decide what it is going to take to fix things. Then we place our order with God in the hope He will give us what we want.

But what if things are so bad you can’t even figure out what to ask for? What if your conscious mind is scrambled due to illness, injury or other circumstances and you can’t even get out what you want to say? Are you done for?

Often it is the realization of our powerlessness that drives us to God, Who is The Source of all Power.

It is our “not knowing” that causes us to run to The One Who does know all.

It is when we cannot stand in our own strength that we fall to our knees before God.

It is when we can’t hold on, even by one fingernail, that we relax our grip and release it all to God. It is only then we can truly receive.

In those moments we discover the depth of The Truth Jesus taught.

“Blessed are those who recognize they are spiritually helpless. (Poor in spirit). The kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”

Matthew 5:3

We hate to admit we are helpless or powerless in any area of our life. If we are Christians, it is particularly troubling to have to acknowledge we’re empty. We don’t have all that spiritual knowledge we thought we did.

But when we get to the point of realizing we can’t handle everything, what we do next determines what happens next.

Will we continue to struggle to hold on? Will we polly parrot what we believe and ask God to agree with us? Will we nameit and try to claim it?

There is another option. We can surrender, not to our circumstances, but to God. We can stop talking and let The Holy Spirit speak for us.

Like The Advocate He is, The Spirit will speak on our behalf. The Spirit will take our jumbled thoughts and express them to God, whole and complete.

The Holy Spirit will express, not just what we think we want, but He will express what we truly need. And He will line us up with what God wants for us, which will always be so much more than we could think or imagine.

Paul said it well.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but The Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He Who searches our hearts knows the mind of The Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with The Will of God.”

Romans 8:26-27

When you don’t know how to pray, stop trying, except to say, “Holy Spirit, please speak for me.”

And then be still in The Presence of God. And praise Him and thank Him.

“To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.”